Transformation in onion has eluded the scientific community. Initial work on the crop centered around use of biolistics as a means of transforming vegetable monocots (Eady, C. C., Weld, R. J. & Lister, C. E. Transformation of onion, Allium cepa L., Proc. Nat. Onion Research Conference, Sacramento, Calif. USA, Dec. 10-12, 1998). No convincing reports were published showing success using this approach. Recent success was reported in transformation of rice, wheat and corn, using Agrobacterium based approaches (U.S. Pat. No. 5,591,616). These reports lead to use of Agrobacterium for transformation in monocot vegetables. Recently, Eady (Eady, C. C., Weld, R. J. & Lister, C. E. Transformation of onion, Allium cepa L, Proc. Nat. Onion Research Conference, Sacramento, Calif. USA, Dec. 10-12, 1998) at Crop and Food, NZ, reported on successful transformation of onion using Agrobacterium with a kanamycin selectable marker and a Green Florescent Protein (GFP) scoreable marker.